We in the modern world have grown used to the wonders of the Space Age. Rockets routinely launch people, probes, and satellites into space, making this once gutsy business seem almost humdrum.

But it’s always a good thing to be reminded of the pluck and determination it takes to strap something to a giant firecracker, light the fuse, and hope that everything goes according to plan. With the recent passing of Neil Armstrong, one of spaceflight’s great heroes, we thought we’d pay tribute to a few of the most amazing and badass maneuvers in spaceflight history.

In this gallery you can find out about the men, women, and a few robots that had the right stuff to keep cool under the most difficult conditions. As everyone knows, breaking the bonds with Earth and floating around in space is already inherently badass so our list is subjective. Please feel free to let us know anything we missed in the comments.

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Armstrong and Agena

The late great Neil Armstrong, whose daring knew no bounds, makes it on our list not once, not twice, but with three counts of spaceflight badassness (and that’s not even counting his awesome role as first man on the moon).

For starters there’s this well-known moment, during Armstrong’s days with the Gemini program. On his first trip to space, Armstrong and his fellow astronaut David Scott coasted their Gemini VIII capsule to the first successful docking in orbit, rendezvousing with the unmanned Agena spacecraft. Shortly after docking, with mission control out of communications range, Scott noticed Gemini was banking and that the Agena was likely to blame. Armstrong realized he would have to pull away to inspect the unmanned vehicle for problems. But when they backed off, their real problems began.

Gemini VIII began tumbling end over end at a dizzying rate of one revolution per second, leaving Armstrong and Scott with blurred vision and in danger of blacking out. Armstrong used his hand controls to steady the vehicle but with such problems, he also knew they would have to make an emergency landing.

With NASA’s tracking stations out of range, the astronauts weren’t quite sure where they would come down. Armstrong feared it would be in some remote wilderness where they would be hard to find. Gemini VIII eventually splashed down in rough swells about 500 miles east of Okinawa in the Pacific, with rescue vehicles recovering them shortly thereafter.

Soviet-Style Landing

Here’s an old joke: In Communist Russia, re-entry from space comes with no braking mechanism and requires you to eject and parachute to the ground from 20,000 feet. (Ha ha!)

At least, that’s what happened to the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, after orbiting the Earth successfully in his Vostok spacecraft in 1961. Soviet engineers at the time had not yet perfected a braking system that could slow the craft down enough for someone to survive impact. The best they could think of was having their pilots eject and parachute from 20,000 feet. Secretive as ever, the Soviet brass kept this mechanism under wraps and told everyone that Gagarin landed with his spacecraft.

It wasn’t until Gherman Titov, the second human in space, owned up to ejecting before landing that the Soviet-style landing technique was discovered. Dangerous and premature as the method was, at least it showed off the high levels of awesome that cosmonauts needed to have if they expected to fly in space.

Image: Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spacecraft, which he did not land in, on display at the RKK Energiya Museum outside of Moscow. Wikimedia/SeifkinDR

Cooper’s Landing

Astronaut Gordon Cooper, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, probably wins as the most clear-headed and fast-thinking space pilot of all time. On the final manned Mercury mission in 1963, Cooper flew the Faith 7 spacecraft into orbit.

After nearly 20 successful trips around Earth, Faith 7 experienced a life-threatening malfunction. Carbon dioxide levels in the vehicle began to climb and the temperature jumped to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool as a cucumber, Cooper took manual control of the spaceship and estimated the angle he needed to approach for re-entry. By using star patterns, drawing lines on his window, and checking his wristwatch to keep time, Cooper calculated his orientation and fired his rockets at just the right time to land almost exactly by the ship waiting to pick him up.

Badass Spacewalk

You might be able to pull off some fancy moves here on Earth, but spacewalking is the ultimate thrill. Floating around with nigh-nothing to protect you save your spacesuit is pretty badass.

The world’s first spacewalk was also included possibly the most awesome life-saving technique ever. In 1965, cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov climbed out of his Voskhod-2 spacecraft and stepped outside. After about 12 minutes in open space, his suit malfunctioned. It began to balloon up and would no longer fit through the tiny airlock. He desperately decreased air pressure in his suit – which could have triggered a potentially dangerous case of the bends – and then straight-up somersaulted through the lock.

The Voskhod-2 crew, which also included commander Pavel Belyayev, suffered a further spate of disasters. Their internal oxygen system began pumping in way too much of the gas, making the vehicle extremely flammable and liable to explode from just one errant spark. During re-entry, they suffered the opposite problem, with the craft's pressure dropping alarmingly. Furthermore, their automatic re-entry program failed. The cosmonauts switched into manual mode and Leonov crouched under a seat to allow Belyayev to lay horizontally and manually orient the vehicle. Once the engines fired, both men had to scramble to return to their seats so as to not leave the vehicle off-center of gravity.

Their descent module landed nearly 250 miles from their target, in a densely forested and remote area north of Perm covered in 6-foot-deep snow. With search parties unable to reach them, the cosmonauts endured a night alone, warding off wolves. Rescuers on skis finally arrived the next day but, since they still couldn’t get a helicopter to land nearby, all the men had to spend another night out in the frozen forest.

At their Moscow press conference a couple of days later, Leonov and Belyayev toed the party line and smiled for the cameras, saying nothing of their harrowing ordeal. Their mission troubles didn’t come to light until after the fall of communism in the late '80s.

Image: Rare footage shows Leonov conducting the first spacewalk outside the Voskhod-2 spacecraft. Still taken from video. YouTube/tvroscosmos

Corned Beef Sandwich

The best spaceflight maneuvers don’t have to be dangerous to be badass. Astronaut John Young proved this in 1965 as part of the two-man crew onboard Gemini III.

Young was apparently a little unhappy with the terrible-tasting space food that astronauts received. Once in orbit, Young pulled out a mysterious object he had snuck aboard, leading to this exchange with his co-pilot Gus Grissom:

Grissom: What is it?
Young: Corn beef sandwich
Grissom: Where did that come from?
Young: I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?

The smuggled sandwich was apparently a nice prank that Young pulled off with help from director of flight crew operations Deke Slayton. Young and Grissom each took a few bites of the contraband and then Young put it back in his pocket.

Neil Armstrong Escapes LLRV

This video shows Neil Armstrong’s last-second escape from a fiery death as a test vehicle crashes in 1968. NASA built this craft, the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, during the Apollo era to give its astronauts practice in touching down on the moon.

During one test at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, a fuel leak caused total failure of the vehicle controls. As the LLRV went spinning down to the ground toward a tragic ending, Armstrong ejected and parachuted safely down. His only injury: a hard tongue bite.

Lunar Landing

Anyone who has played the early Atari videogame Lunar Lander knows that landing on the moon is tricky business.

Neil Armstrong did that, except for real, and 100 percent more badass than any low-graphic video game could allow. As the Apollo 11 mission approached the lunar surface, Armstrong made the decision to take the lander vehicle slightly past the chosen spot. Seeing large boulders at the region that could have potentially caused the lunar module problems, Armstrong flew beyond this field, running the fuel tanks 36 seconds longer than planned.

It might not sound like much time but, because of sloshing the tanks, Armstrong had no way of accurately gauging how much fuel he had left. The longer burn used up about 530 lbs. of fuel and left the module with a razor-thin margin of error. Post-flight analysis showed that he had about 12 to 15 seconds of fuel left in the descent stage when he touched down on the lunar surface.

Saving Salyut

In 1985, the Soviet Salyut-7 space station was dead, crippled by a solar array malfunction. Rather than leave it to rot, the Russians decided to send a rescue crew to repair the station, launching cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibenkov and Viktor Savinykh to space.

Frozen, drifting, and spinning asymmetrically, the space station was not an attractive target. Since it was not broadcasting radar or telemetry for rendezvous, Dzhanibenkov and Savinykh basically had to track Salyut-7 like a cat-and-mouse game in space. As they approached, they used a hand-held laser rangefinder to determine their distance and successfully dock.

Inside, the station was arctic cold, with ice covering nearly everything. The cosmonauts worked and slept in full winter garb with fur hats — probably a better job for experienced Russians than Americans.

Taking shifts, Dzhanibenkov and Savinykh replaced the station’s batteries and systematically resuscitated its components, system by system. Within a week, Salyut-7 was working well enough to allow robotic cargo ships to dock. The space station was inhabited for another year and eventually burned up in Earth orbit in 1991.

Image: Diagram of a Salyut station with Soyuz spacecraft attached. NASA

Skylab Tools

In 1973, the U.S. got its own space station, Skylab, and immediately needed to repair it. The first crew sent to the station – composed of astronauts Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, and Joe Kerwin – had to unjam the primary solar array and mend Skylab’s meteorite and sun shield, without which the station sat roasting in the sun. Baking temperatures inside the space station threatened the crew and their food supplies.

In space, the astronauts found their tools weren’t the right ones for the job. They had to fabricate new instruments on the spot from on-board material lying about. The crew assembled six 5-foot rods with a cable cutter attached to the end and then tied 20 feet of rope to pull the cutter. Conrad and Kerwin used this jury-rigged item to free the jammed solar array.

Both astronauts then had to heave with all their might to get the array positioned correctly. When it finally came unstuck, the panels flung Conrad and Kerwin from the space station hull, requiring them to both act quickly to regain their positions.

In addition, the crew deployed a collapsible parasol as a replacement sunshield, bringing temperatures inside the station down to workable levels. They remained aboard for another month, finishing repairs and gathering data.

Image: Skylab during the first manned mission to the space station. NASA

Hand-Captured Satellite

On the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1992, three astronauts — Pierre Thuot, Richard Hieb, and Thomas Akers — were hanging outside the vehicle. This was not a typical situation. One, or at most two, astronauts at a time typically undertook extravehicular activity (EVA).

This unexpected turn of events started when the crew attempted to capture the non-functional Intelsat VI satellite, which launched two years prior but had suffered a malfunction that left it in low-Earth orbit. The satellite needed to climb higher, to geosynchronous orbit, in order to conduct communications properly. During an initial spacewalk, Thuot and Hieb were unable to snag the satellite with an 8-foot capture bar on the end of the shuttle’s long arm.

Difficult times call for extraordinary measures and mission control made the call to try a three-person EVA for a never-before-attempted maneuver. The next day, Thuot, Hieb, and Akers all suited up and climbed into space together as their pilot, Daniel C. Brandenstein, carefully nudged the shuttle to within a few feet of the 4.5-ton satellite. The three astronauts reached out and grabbed the satellite with their gloved hands.

The astronauts repaired their catch, attaching a new engine that tugged the errant satellite to its intended orbit.

Chandra Launch

The Columbia spacecraft launched in 1999, bringing with it a special payload: the Chandra X-ray space telescope. But the mission was wracked with problems, starting five seconds after launch when an electrical short took down two of the three main engine controllers. The launch director had the choice to abort the mission and attempt the first ever return-to-launch-site maneuver but instead decided to go forward.

Soon after, the shuttle’s engine three started leaking hydrogen. Mission commander Eileen Collins noted that the engines were running very hot throughout the vehicle’s ascent to space and controllers nearly aborted the mission at several other points.

Limping to space, Columbia barely made it through the launch. The shuttle had run out of fuel and its reusable engines were seriously damaged so the spacecraft settled in a far lower orbit than intended. After releasing its cargo, the shuttle returned to Earth early and no doubt with an exhausted crew. Chandra is still flying high and has significantly expanded astronomers’ view of the heavens.

Robotic Right Stuff

Humans aren’t particularly special — robots can also have the right stuff. While probably every robotic probe sent out into space can boast some badass moves, perhaps none are more impressive than the recent Curiosity rover’s landing.

This was one of the most complex sequences undertaken on another planet. As the spacecraft entered the atmosphere, it went through six configurations, shedding layer after layer of landing vehicles to slow it down. Explosive charges – 76 of them – took off each piece and also deployed a supersonic parachute, the largest ever built for an interplanetary mission. The rover was tucked beneath a hovering platform that fired eight rockets to kill its velocity until it could be safely lowered on ropes – the famous “sky crane” maneuver – to achieve a soft landing on the ground.

One more badass pair of robots deserve mentioning here: the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. Voyager 1 swung by Jupiter and Saturn as part of a proposed Grand Tour mission, discovering volcanoes on the moon Io and taking close-up views of Saturn’s gorgeous rings before flying out of the solar system. Voyager 2 was meant to follow more or less the same trajectory but, in a moment of awesomeness, NASA mission control decided to extend its mission and travel on to Uranus and Neptune, becoming the first and only spacecraft to do so. Both robots continue to receive commands and beam back data 35 years after they were launched. Voyager 1 is currently entering interstellar space, becoming the farthest manmade object in history.

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